FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGY- AFTER A GUILTY VERDICT

• Content analysis of Prison deaths in England and Wales from 1972 to 1987
• 442 unnatural deaths
• 300 suicide and 52 consciously self inflicted injury
• Significantly more of suicide were on remand 
• Unnatural deaths are being attributed to overcrowding, increasing prisoners' stress levels 

• Federal offenders conditional released between january 1998 and January 2005 
• 24,000 95% males
• Content analysis
• Employment- 6 months for males and 10 months for females
• Those in employment- likely to stay on conditional release
• Median time to return- 37 months for employed and 11 months for unemployed
• Employed- 70% on conditonal release
• Unemployed- 56% on conditional release
• 64.7% are reconvicted within 2 years 

Changes to the prison system over the last 25 years:

• 'War on Drugs'
• Sentance to be srved with no parole
• More prisions= more prisoners
• Black people made up 48% of prison population but 6% of general population
• 'Supermanx' prison

Suggestions for improvement:

• Prisons are psychologically damaging
• Decompression programmes
• More situationally specific assessments
• Psychological knowledge needs to be used to improve the nature and effects of prisons 

• 3299 offenders (3300) selected from 22 probation offices in the UK
• Interviews conducted by independent researchers
• Closed questions and multiple choice
• 88% found probation useful
• 60% thought that their probation officer would help them personally
• Only 37% said that probation would help them stop reoffending
• Probation was seen positively 

• Content analysis of 36 papers comparing re-offending rates of people who had undergone restorative justice or not
• Restorative justice was effective when there was a personal victim
• Effective in providing peace of mind and reducing post traumatic stress
• Support for restorative justice for young and first time offenders 

• 44 cases of a black man murdering a white man
• Rate facial features on rating of stereotypicalness 1-11
• 51 raters (32 white, 15 asian and 4 other)
• Most stereotypially black were 57.5% more liekly to recieve death sentances than the less stereotypically black at 24.4%

• 180 offenders who started Enchanced Thinking skills (ETS) or R&R and 14 non-completers
• Expected re-conviction rates were calcuated
• No difference between treated group and compartison group and reconviction rate
• R&R- significantly more likely to reoffend

• 50 prisoners completed anger management course
• 37 prisoners who were considered as suitable
• Quasi experiment
• Interview- Wing Behavioural Checklist (WBC), and self report (AMA) 
• Significant reduction in Wing based aggression in the experimental group
• Scored lower on the self report measures
• 92% of experimental group showed improvement on at least one measure
• Anger management helps in the short term (didn't look at reoffending rates) 

• 350 prisoners in 6 high security prisoners
• FOCUS
• Two trained practioners given 10-15 participants each time
• 40 min acupuncture session
• Qualitative data- better sleep, more relaxed, reduced cravings for nicotine
• Quantitative data- 70% reduction in drug related incidents, 41% reduction in serious incidents, 48% reduction in positive drug therapy
• Acupuncture works as a complementary therapy with other programmes